


Brace Height

by shybird



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Archery, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Has Issues, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know how to tag this, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Weaponry, death background characters (non-canon), kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 17:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2278488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shybird/pseuds/shybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t have any connection to him. It’s probably easier to face someone he’s never had contact with—”</p><p>They only caught each other’s eye for a split second before the Winter Soldier took off like the shot he’d just fired and Clint was in pursuit not a second later, grabbing at his bow and quiver as he booked it after him.</p><p>“—and you just happened to be there, Barton.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brace Height

The arrow was jammed right through the target, sitting in between the seven and five point marker, _mocking_ him. He’d yanked the other ones out easily enough, though this one managed to wedge itself all the way through the damn board and the broadhead tip was lodged in the back of the stand. He put a foot onto the target in order to get more power behind his useless pulling, both hands firmly wrapped just below the fletching. “Okay,” Clint muttered. “This is _stupid_.”

The gym was empty save for Clint and the lodged arrow that was beginning to gain a personality. He had abandoned his bow and quiver on the other side of the room to retrieve the arrows and was becoming increasingly thankful no one had decided to pop into Avengers Tower to use the facilities. The gym was the one thing he enjoyed about the place, otherwise he generally took to staying at his own building—there was enough to keep up with there without hanging about the Tower when he wasn’t needed.

But, Stark had modified the lowest level to fit each of the member’s specific workout routines, which included a decently sized track for Clint to shoot on. Sure, he practiced in his apartment a bit (illegal) but finding an archery range in the middle of New York City was a challenge in its own, so he took the opportunity without complaint.

As of this evening he’d only passed by Banner on his way down—Clint was pretty sure the guy practically lived in the labs here—though the rest of the night had been quiet. And as he pulled and tugged at the ( _damn—futz—stupid futzing—_ ) arrow, which wasn’t anywhere near the bullseye by the way, he couldn’t be thankful enough that no one was around. Everyone thought he had the perfect shot (he usually did) and while he knew he had off days, no one else seemed to comprehend that, and he didn’t want to get that look from any of them if they caught him bickering with a broadhead lodged about half a foot from the yellow. Banner would start psychoanalyzing him, and Rogers would probably want to have a “chat,” and Natasha—well, okay, Natasha wouldn’t be surprised, but she’d still arch her eyebrow in that way she does and fold her arms looking thoroughly unimpressed. And that’s not to even mention what Kate would say if she’d been in the city.

All he wanted was to dislodge the arrow, go get Chinese, and sit around with his dog until someone needed him for something. He could catch up on that one show, maybe finish off that coffee ice cream, it’d be great, if only the arrow wasn’t torturing him. Clint thought distantly as he moved around to see just how much the tip was through to the other side that maybe he’d just not leave his apartment for the next three weeks. The Tracksuits could deal without him putting up a fuss for a while, right?

“Damnit, Barton,” he mumbled to himself. The feathers were beginning to fray under all the strain he’d put on them and he had half a mind to just break it off at both sides and leave the rest—if he could, the thing was made of aluminum.

He took a few steps back to survey the target again. There must have been a line of plywood amidst the polystyrene somewhere in the target that caught the shaft. If he could hit the nock through just a little more, then maybe—

A bullet blew just past his head, shattering in the dead center of the target, leaving both Clint’s ears buzzing and a gaping hole through the bullseye. He only processed his arrow wavering in the vibrations for a moment before he whipped his head around.

They only caught each other’s eye for a split second before the Winter Soldier took off like the shot he’d just fired and Clint was after him not a second later, grabbing at his bow and quiver as he booked it through the gym.

The Soldier took a sharp turn the second he was out of the doors, sprinting through Tony’s garage, darting in between the collection of cars. Clint wasn’t far behind, shouting whatever words came to his mind, in any attempt to get the guy to stop. When “hey” and “asshole” didn’t work, he hopped onto the cars and continued the pursuit over the hoods (Stark’s not going to be happy). He nocked two arrows, jumping onto the roof of a sporty red lamborghini and getting just in line with the Soldier’s footwork.

He loosed the arrows, and while the other man hardly took notice of them, it was enough to derail his run and allow Clint to tackle him head on, pushing him to the ground with a mean right hook. The Soldier returned the impact with his metal fist, ten fold, to Clint’s face the moment he could, and they struggled on the ground for a moment before the Soldier kneed the bowman hard in the stomach and managed to toss him off with another kick to his shin. The Winter Soldier was up and off again, firing a couple of warning shots next to where Clint was trying to roll to his feet.

Nocking an arrow again, he loosed it in the general direction the Soldier had run off, despite the fact that by then he knew the guy was already gone. The ringing in his ears didn’t consume the small _thack_ of the dull broadhead hitting the metal of a car door a ways off. Breathing coming hard, he pulled himself to the side of the garage and pressed down on a fire alarm, which more often than not meant _danger_ in the Tower rather than any actual _fire_.

He waited a moment to catch his breath, the pain of the Soldier’s punch suddenly hitting him more now than a few moments before and he groaned, rubbing at his cheek which was bound to be black and blue. He’d have to deal with the constant buzzing he was hearing from the gun going off so close to his head soon as well. He couldn’t find one single thing to wrap his brain around, the other man had appeared so quickly, and he felt the adrenaline pumping through his heart to chase after him. It would have been a useless pursuit however and he finally decided to go find anyone who was in the Tower. But first—

He wandered around the car park a moment before he found what he was looking for. The car his arrow had landed in was a sleek black and he tugged at the nock to pull it out. Of course, it was stuck.

() ()

“Mind explaining why there are three, no wait, four, yeah, _four_ arrows jammed in various parts of my building?”

He was walking alongside Stark, trying his best to recount the brief encounter with the Winter Soldier without sounding too crazed. “Four?” He asked, frowning slightly behind the bag of frozen peas he kept tight against his face. There was definitely going to be some bruising, thanks Steve’s friend. “You must not have found… Never mind, you’re right. Let’s go with four.”

Tony only made a dramatic full-headed-I’m-not-sure-why-I-put-up-with-you-guys eye roll before typing in a code to one of the labs on a computer screen and buzzing them in with a few words to Jarvis. “I don’t know how the hell he got in, the place is locked down, you need a damn code to every room you walk into—Jarvis, can you tell me when this guy got in? I swear, he’s like a goddamn stray cat. What cameras did you catch him on? This is ridiculous, he’s been hanging around the Tower radius for the past three _months_.”

“Sir, the only footage of James Buchanan Barnes loaded into the security camera’s drive that I have only show him after Mr. Clint Barton began pursuit.” The AI began above their heads. “He is just out of sight, based on his position when he enters camera 2A in the gym. Might I suggest code C36-Romeo?”

Clint slowly tuned out Tony and his AI’s jargon, hopping onto a table to mess with whatever bit of equipment happened to be there. When Tony began talking to Jarvis, it was as if they were talking their own made up language and it hardly mattered to try to keep up. Not to mention they weren’t much helping that constant mechanical buzzing in his ear. Should probably get on that.

What he picked up looked like a miniature version of the repulsors used in the Iron Man suit, unfinished but sparked when he tugged slightly at the wires. He wondered briefly if he could use something like this for his combat equipment; have an arrow detonate before it hit anything using the technology Stark used here. It was possible (unnecessary). He continued tugging at the pieces, wires fraying a bit.

“Hey,” Suddenly Tony was snapping his fingers under Clint’s nose, making a few hand motions that the bowman waved off. “Hey, no, I need you to focus here, you’re the one that had the weird run in with Barnes.” He plucked the bit of hardware out of his hands, tossing it recklessly onto another table. He paused, staring at it for a quick second, clearly having understood Clint’s fascination. “I could make you new arrows. You probably need some now that yours are, you know, scattered throughout the Tower.”

“Six!” Clint quickly claimed, throwing his hands up and dropping the bag of peas. “There are only six that I couldn’t get out!”

“And at least two of them are sticking out the sides of my favorite cars!”

“You only saw two? Okay, there might be seven total.”

Tony squinted at him. (That’s it! That’s the look he was trying to avoid in the first place!)

Clint only smiled back, shamefully. “Eight tops. It’s been a long night.”

Letting out an exasperated breath, Tony started tinkering with the screens that were floating around him, opening file after file to sort through footage. The Soldier had been hanging out around the Tower here and there since he pulled Steve out of the Potomac, and everyone assumed it was to find Steve. But, Captain America was hardly ever at the Tower if he could help it, aside for when Stark called him in with another “Bucky Sighting” as he called it. Clint generally tried to stay out of it; he didn’t need another assassin on his tail. Of course, he was _Clint_ and trouble tended to just run into him (or did he run into it?)

Tony was still muttering under his breath to Jarvis when Clint hesitantly pulled a field-tip from his quiver that was still clipped at his belt to mess with it. He pulled his knees to his chest and tapped it against his shoe, trying to recall what he’d read about James Barnes. Fury had handed him his file once Hydra had officially been extracted from SHIELD but he had to put the papers down once he got to “memory erasure” and “mind control,” it made Clint feel a little sick. He didn’t need to relive any of that himself. He realized he really didn’t know much about the guy other than what Natasha had told him and even then, she hadn’t said much. All he knew for sure was that he was on SHIELD’s list.

After he had hit the fire alarm, Clint stayed in the garage for several long minutes firing arrows at random in the direction the Winter Soldier had run off, trying to will away the pain and bruising under his eye. He had known it was futile to go after him even if the Soldier only had a minute head start so Clint settled for seeing how much of a ricochet his field-tips had against the concrete walls while the alarms wailed around him. It at least tuned out his ears malfunctioning (again.)

Speaking of, “Hey Stark, do you think you could help me out?”

() ()

The mission Fury sent him on was frustrating, to say the least. Slowly, the Avengers were being pulled back into SHIELD operations through Fury once he felt confident that Hydra had been finally taken down. The process had been a long one, eliminating spies and sorting through who had actually been working through Hydra and who hadn’t. It was a process Clint was never pulled in to, but based on what Natasha said of it, it sounded like a long, brutal several months of interrogation. Nonetheless, once SHIELD was running again, the missions were sketchy at best and there was very little information to go on, no script to follow (to break).

AIM was had little pockets of recruits that sprung up here and there throughout North America and Western Europe and Fury had sent Hawkeye in to sort the matter out, “quickly and quietly,” he had said.

As of now, he was trapped at the bottom of an elevator shaft in Manchester, having dodged several bullets that flew far too closely to vital regions of his body, and flung himself through the nearest door without realizing it opened to the long drop. His shoulder ached from falling on it and he was sure that some of his more weapon-enhanced arrows had broken in the event. It sucked.

“No, no, listen, _Kate_ , I just need you to check up on Lucky okay?” A pause. “Yeah, I _know_ , but I didn’t realize this would take so long. I’m going to be here a few more days, Fury told me it wouldn’t be more than forty eight hours and I had the neighbors check on him during—okay, just, would you—” He groaned loudly into the phone which was half static at the bottom of the shaft. “You can call me all the clever names you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that Lucky is the… okay, okay, thanks Kate. I owe you one. Five, fine. Five. What’s that bring me up to?”

He paced around the small opening, listening to Kate’s cut-out voice on the other end as she deliberately counted just _how many_ things he owed her for. He laughed once she reached her final conclusion, the sound echoing through the metal walls. Finally he hung up, tucking the phone back into a pocket and sat down next to the vent that was blowing cool air into the small opening. The vent most likely led to one of the upper levels, based on the amount of draft streaming through and he could get out from there. The closest door was about a storey and a half up and he’d used (lost) the grappling hooks he’d brought with him.

Picking at the screws a little, he quickly snapped on of his arrows in two to use the broadhead as a makeshift screwdriver. As he began working, a hand pushed him out of the way with a surprising amount of force and it took Clint a split second to gather his bearings and fire the broken arrow at the intruder.

Two gunshots met him in return, both missing his shoulders by about half a foot on either side. It was a lazy attempt of a shot and he pressed himself against one side of the shaft, halting his breath and keeping perched on his toes. He could still feel the heat of the bullets on the wall when there was a metallic shift and the vent’s cover came ripping off, colliding to the ground ungracefully.

The Soldier stood in front of him, staring at the remains of the vent.

It suddenly felt too cramped in the shaft, and Clint kept his breathing steady, the only noise coming from the string as he tightened it around another nock and the echoes of metal-on-metal that hadn’t faded yet. He waited sixty seconds, counting each beat in his head, before he carefully lowered his bow and the Soldier visibly relaxed once he was not being aimed at. The pistol that had been pointed somewhere to the left of Clint lowered minutely.

“Why are you here?” he finally asked, settling on “why” rather than “how” or “when” or “dear god please don’t kill me in an elevator shaft _I have a dog_.”

There was no reply—no verbal reply, at least. The Winter Soldier merely gave him a sidelong glance before shuffling himself into the vent, boots nearly silent along the way. Clint hurried in after him, quickly unstringing his bow to follow seeing as how the air duct wasn’t larger than four square feet. He generally prided himself on how quiet he could be in combat situations when he wanted to be, but next to the Soldier, he could hear every one of his footsteps echo and every clamor of his equipment against the tight metal walls. The guy really lived up to his name; he practically was a ghost.

Once in their little escapade, the Soldier had dropped to a knee and motioned for Clint to stop, waving a hand about when Clint was clearly making too much noise for his liking. After a solid few minutes, whatever the Soldier had detected seemed to have calmed and he continued on through the vent, the bowman close on his tail. The air duct pulled upwards slowly until Clint was fairly sure they were on the second or third level and they came to another halt when the Soldier ripped off the vent's cover and they both clamored out into a relatively open room.

He inhaled deeply, happy to not be in such tight quarters with the assassin, and he vaguely noticed the Soldier doing the same. They’d found their way into a computer lab, one Clint was meant to find for data extraction, and he passed by the assassin easily to one of the computers to do his job. It was a simple part to the mission—find AIM’s grid of the building and then proceed to take it down. “If you find anything worth saving on their database, take that as well,” Fury had told him so he quickly maneuvered the server, saving what he could.

The Soldier wandered the room silently, appearing to survey the area, which only left Clint on edge. “So, here’s a question for you: what the hell?” he said, typing on the keyboard. He didn’t miss how Barnes’ head snapped over to him to _glare_ but, come on, no one was around to hear. “’Cause you just kind of showed up out of nowhere. You working for these goons?”

While he wouldn’t reply to that (duh), Clint couldn’t help but wonder how the mission would drastically change if the Winter Soldier had been taken in by AIM. It’d be a bit of a hassle. A hassle he didn’t really want to deal with.

The floor plans to the building popped up on the screen and he poured over it for a moment, locating the main points he needed to hit.

“You’re loud.”

“’Scuse me?” Clint finally looked up from the screen, trying to riddle his way around the fact that the Winter Soldier actually spoke.

The Soldier only shrugged, hands gripping a rifle a little too tightly for Clint’s enjoyment. His eyebrows knit together and he skirted closer to the exit, eyes on the door. Unhooking the drive and stringing his bow, the marksman followed once more. There were voices not far off that he was finally registering as the cause of Barnes’ handle on his weapon. He adjusted his quiver for a better angle at the arrows and double checked the other weaponry had had on his person, slipping the drive into a pocket.

Silently, the Soldier edged around the corner motioning for Clint to keep by his side, moving his fingers fluidly over the quick commands. They slipped around the corner and before the two AIM troops could even comment on the approaching bowman and assassin, an arrow pierced one of their heads and a bullet the other, both shots directly between their eyes, clean, quick, and lethal.

Clint turned to say something, something about how Clint should have very much been dead months ago if _that’s_ how good the Winter Soldier was, and boy was he glad he was in fact not dead, but as he took a breath, the assassin was gone, completely and silently out of sight. He twisted around once or twice to catch any glimpse of where he’d gone. With no luck and no time to take his disappearance into consideration, he trekked down the hall to complete the mission.

Belatedly, Clint realized the Soldier had been using American Sign Language as opposed to military hand signals.

() ()

“Aw, bro.” Clint whined from the back of the van, less worried and more resigned to the situation. These guys seriously would not give up and it was almost becoming routine. Wake up, make coffee, take Lucky out, go to SHIELD, go home, get beat up and-or kidnapped by the tracksuit mafia.

He was slowly working at the bindings around his wrists, tuning out the “bro”s coming from the front seat, contemplating his life, wondering how much force it would take to break the window. As if on cue, the glass shattered and the man in the front fell over the wheel with a gaping hold through the side of his head. Clint hollered at the sight, startled, quickly undoing the rest of the rope as the car swerved dangerously into the next lane. He hopped up to the front, nudging over the dead man, grabbing at the steering wheel, and slamming the van into park. The van that had been following closely crashed into them and Clint threw himself to the floor, covering his head as the airbags went off and the van teetered on its wheels.

There were three more explosions of glass being shattered behind the van he was in and once the coast appeared clear enough, he slowly exited the car, hands up just in case. Aside from several onlookers and many cars stopping to examine the sight, there was nothing suspicious on ground level that would have hit the driver. He shuffled over to the other van to take a look at the damage there. The other three men had similar gunshot wounds to their head, each painfully precise and directly through the center of their eyes.

Clint had only seen one person aim quite like that in the recent past.

() ()

“I think you’re obsessing, Clint.”

They were sitting in a SHIELD conference room on one of the Helicarriers waiting for Fury to show up to debrief them. Clint much preferred missions that involved Natasha, and he told her as much frequently. The mission had gone smoothly, they were in and out of the country before they were even noticed. It reminded him of before the Avengers, of before all of the superheroing had started, when he was just part of the SHIELD routine. It was cleaner, he thought. Now he had a ninety-year-old super assassin shadowing him around every corner.

“Guy’s got everyone I know riled up these days,” She mused, more to herself than to Clint.

“I’m not kidding, Nat, you know I’ve got better things to do than to make up stories about Steve’s weird friend.” She quirked an eyebrow, fiddling with the files on the table, bored. She probably had enough of this from Steve whom she was ten times more patient with to begin with. “Okay, maybe not _better_ things to do, but why would I ever care about this guy, huh?”

He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. He felt banged up from the mission and they hadn’t gone to medical yet. He anticipated a fractured rib. Natasha looked exhausted as well, but she was much better about hiding it than he was. She mostly just looked exhausted with _SHIELD_ and its history of the past year. Things had gotten (mostly) back to normal with Fury back at the helm, but the operation was small and no one was quite trustworthy yet. He was grateful that he didn’t fall under Natasha’s “be wary of” list, given their own history. It’s the small things.

Fury finally arrived with two men in tow, doors opening noisily as they entered. He looked equally as tired as Natasha did, Clint thought, as he settled into a chair in front of them.

“Maybe that’s just it,” Natasha said as Fury began gathering up papers.

“What’s it?”

“You don’t have any connection to him. To Bucky. It’s easier to face someone he’s never had contact with and you just happened to be there.” She shrugged to Clint, ignoring Fury’s suspicious glance to the two of them. Despite wanting to apprehend the Winter Soldier, Fury generally looked the other way when it came to him these days. For Steve’s sake.

“He’s said exactly two words to me, how could that be it?”

“We’re dealing with a guy who’s been brainwashed, he’s not exactly in his right mind.” She lowered her voice, putting a hand onto his knee. “You should be able to understand that something like that—it’s not easy.”

Fury finally cleared his throat loudly, dropping a stack of papers onto the table. “If we’re quite through? I’d like to get you guys cleared before I’ve got _another_ couple of ninety-year-old agents on my hands.”

() ()

Clint loosed an arrow directly upward, watching the night sky as it plummeted back towards him, hitting the ground not two feet away. He nocked another arrow and pointed it above himself, moving his shoulders slightly so he could get a better angle from where he laid on the roof of the Tower. He let the string snap as the arrow spiraled into the air. Okay, this doesn’t look smart.

But to be fair: he was _bored_! He had to hang around the Tower for at least another half hour or so and had to kill the time somehow. For some reason, this seemed like the best solution. The arrow dove back down towards him and landed somewhere a yard or so off. The longbow in his grip was foreign compared to the bows he had been using more frequently on his missions—the high-tech recurves he was stupidly proud of that had controls linked to the quiver—but it was nice to get back to the basics.

He patted the ground around him, feeling for another arrow without putting too much effort into it, when a boot stepped heavily up to him. Had it not been for his peripherals, Clint wouldn’t have even noticed. He jerked upright, spinning around, bow tight in his hand even if he had no arrow to load it with.

The Winter Soldier was standing over him, mouth moving quickly, though no sound reached Clint’s ears.

“Sorry, pal,” Clint said, too loudly he processed based more on the slightly startled reaction of the other man than the vibrations in his own throat. He tried to take his volume down a bit. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Stark’s got my hearing aids in his lab.”

He was met with something that looked akin to apprehension. They locked eyes for a good few minutes, the grasp on his longbow never letting up. Then, the Soldier shifted awkwardly and went to sit down next to Clint on the edge of the building—several feet from him but it was more relaxed than he ever expected the guy to look. The Soldier took a deep breath, his shoulders moving with the action. He took a few glances at Clint, clearly mulling over his next move. But he started speaking again, lips moving over syllables and vowels that the bowman wasn’t about to try to understand. He had more important details to worry about (the hand on the hilt of a pistol, for one) than lip-reading.

Clint watched him speak to the air, sound being washed away with no one to hear it. Slowly, he put the longbow down, finally deciding Barnes wasn’t about to shoot at him. He let the assassin speak to him, only catching words here and there on the other’s mouth that seemed to be repeated often (“Steve”). He didn’t know their story, had heard vaguely about how they had grown up together, but he wasn’t going to pry and simply let Bucky Barnes’ words fall onto him with deaf ears. Just as slowly as he had put his bow down, he realized that was why Bucky hadn’t made any move to run, he had finally found a living body that he could confide in without worrying what the consequences of his words would be. No one would hear them.

Just like Natasha had said. He smiled a little.

The theory had Clint pulling an arrow into his lap and playing with the fletching, running a finger over the feathers as Bucky spoke to him. It was a strange thought that passed through his head, that he was being useful to someone when he generally felt most useless.

The night sky stayed a consistent dark purple-red, with so much light pollution just underneath, only a few stars were able to peek through the constant illumination. He didn’t mind it, how bright the city was, and Barnes’ gaze softened when Clint had pointed it out at random. They continued like this for longer than Clint could count. The Soldier speaking and Clint breaking the monologue here and there to mention something that caught his eye without knowing what Barnes replies had been. It was a nice, if not extremely bizarre, sort of company they kept until Clint’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

A text from Tony told him he could grab his “new and improved hearing aids—seriously, I need to patent this shit, you’ll hardly know they’re there and they’re ten times better than the last ones” and when he looked back up to Bucky, he had already stood up but hadn’t moved from his spot at the edge of the roof. He was looking down on Clint, hands awkwardly posed in front of him.

Before he could ask, Bucky was signing to him, slowly at first and picking up speed as he picked up confidence when Clint signed back to him out of habit.

They signed to each other for several long minutes until Clint, with a shit eating grin plastered on his face, started correcting the goddamn Winter Soldier on his ASL. Bucky, having had said what he needed to say, actually rolled his eyes and mimicked Clint’s devious smile, and tapped the sign for the alphabetical _A_ to the side of his head twice.

Clint let out a barking laugh, and finally climbed to his feet.

The smile vanished from Bucky’s face and he suddenly looked uncomfortable again, shuffling backwards momentarily before bringing his right hand to his lip downward once and then he turned to leave.

() ()

There was a knock at his door and the only reason Clint didn’t make any fuss about unwanted solicitors was because he knew who was on the other side. He pulled the door open, giving a welcoming smile to Bucky who had taken it upon himself to show up at Clint’s apartment once every two weeks or so. He didn’t need to say a word and Bucky sauntered into the living room, immediately dropping down to pet Lucky.

Clint took up his bow again and steadily aimed at one of the targets he had set up against the opposite wall. “So,” he said slowly. He thought this was the fourth (fifth?) time the Soldier had moseyed on into his home and it was becoming increasingly more pleasant. Because Natasha is always right, her theory was true that the Winter Soldier only needed someone to talk to and after he learned that Clint wasn’t about to go tell SHIELD everything he told him, he hardly cared if Clint had his hearing aids switched on or not. Frankly, the guy just wanted someone who wouldn’t _really_ listen, not in the way Captain America would at least. And that was one thing Clint didn’t need to rely on his hearing aids for. It felt good. He straightened his back and locked his arms. “Lucky’s sure warmed up to you.”

He loosed the arrow. There was a rough _thack_ of the arrow hitting the center of the target.

Bucky made a humming noise in response. “The knives threw him the first couple of times I was here,” he played along. “You got’m trained well.”

Shrugging, Clint only glanced over to where Bucky had made his way to the couch, flipping through some of the magazines that were scattered on the floor and toeing at the half-drank bottles of beer. “Nah, I found him like that.” Bucky settled in, metal arm moving to adjust the hem of his shirt. Clint didn’t mention that the shirt he was sporting looked suspiciously like one of Steve’s. Maybe it’d come up later.

Bucky started speaking to him then, about the week, about his memories, about anything he wasn’t comfortable disclosing to Steve (—“Not yet, not when he doesn’t have a clue what I’d done”—) and let the words spill out of his mouth without pause as Clint fired away at the targets against the apartment wall (still illegal). He didn’t say much, didn’t ask questions, just let Bucky say what he needed. The agreement they’d come to was nice, the agreement that Bucky had signed to him on the roof several months before—before he’d called Clint an asshole.

Bucky needed to talk and Clint, whether he admitted it or not, wanted someone there. Someone who had no expectations of him and could make him feel a little less lost.

When he went to retrieve the arrows, they slid from the target easily.

**Author's Note:**

> This had been entirely experimental... Wanted to try out writing some semi-action sequences. I also tried to find a healthy mix of MCU Clint and Matt Fraction’s Clint (ended up leaning more towards Fraction’s interpretation). With that in mind I hope I stayed in-character with him!!


End file.
